By the end of American involvement, and especially by the fall of Saigon, reformer elements had prevailed in the South Vietnamese government and especially the military. William E. LeGro suggests on page 179 of "Vietnam from Cease-Fire to Capitulation," that given time, "a new generation of younger South Vietnam leaders probably could have produced the leadership to institute the internal reforms so badly needed."

Many staff-level commands had managed to flush out corrupt generals - the remaining ARVN generals in 1973 were well known among the Vietnamese and even the remaining Americans for their combat capabilities and incorruptible nature.

However, the South Vietnamese political leadership was still rife with corruption, leading to infighting occurring up until the very end.

The disaster of the Central Highlands was not inevitable, although Thieu's decision did precipitate a massive collapse in command and control. If the routing ARVN forces had managed to maintain civil control in the cities, as Cao Van Vien suggests on page 113 of "The Final Collapse," the exodus from Hue and Da Nang might have been avoided and pockets of resistance on the coast might have survived for a while longer.

The issue is that the Paris Peace Accords had effectively tied the ARVN JGS' hands behind its back; the South Vietnamese military had to draw down much of its forces. The NVA was forced to do no such thing. Meanwhile LeGro also suggests a connection between Hungarian members of the Four Party Military Commission and NVA sappers destroying fuel and ammo dumps.

While the US Congress voted down military assistance to the South Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese continued to use Laos and Cambodia as staging points for incursions into the South, expanding the Ho Chi Minh trail from the dirt trail it once was to a paved highway, funneling tanks and troops to the South. George Veith points out the construction of an oil pipeline running alongside the trail in his book, "Black April: The Fall of Vietnam 1973-1975." Valuable supplies continued to cross into North Vietnam from China and Soviet Russia while the ARVN practically begged to be resupplied.

The Paris Peace Accords had also allowed NVA units to remain in defensive positions in the South, further complicating the ARVN's predicament. So the NVA had become quite the conventional force to be reckoned with.

In spite of all this, the ARVN, where it did make its stand, particularly at Xuan Loc, showed tremendous courage and fighting capabilities; South Vietnam's remaining generals were considered top-notch by the Americans and given the opportunity, would have given the NVA a run for its money were it not for the refugee crisis.

For the life of me, I cannot remember the source where I read this, but I remember reading that one of the ARVN generals, perhaps IV Corps commander Huỳnh Văn Cao or his deputy commander Lê Văn Hưng, suggesting an armor-led breakout from Saigon to a redoubt in Delta, perhaps at Can Tho. Most intact ARVN units were still actively fighting the NVA on April 30th. If street to street fighting had occurred for Saigon, the ARVN had a chance of making the NVA pay dearly for their offensive.